Criminal Law

Director of National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty Reflects on the 132nd Death Row Exoneration

Posted on May 18, 2009
On May 14, Diann Rust-Tierney wrote a compelling article for The Huffington Post concerning the Paul House case and its implications for other cases of possible innocence, specifically the case of Troy Davis. Davis currently sits on Georgia's death row and is awaiting a decision in his case by the U...

PAUL HOUSE IS EXONERATED

Posted on May 12, 2009
As I was getting ready for work today I walked out of the bathroom to hear Paul House?s name on the Channel 4 News. I ran to the screen only to catch a segway into the next news brief. Shrugging it off, I figured it was a quick update to the June 1 retrial or another trial extension request, as it's happened twice before...

Colorado Senate Falls One Vote Short of Repeal

Posted on May 07, 2009
Yesterday a Colorado bill that would have repealed the death penalty and dedicated the savings to solving cold cases failed by just one vote in the Senate. The Colorado House voted in favor of repeal by one vote last month. The bill would have redirected $1 million currently spent on the death penalty to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for investigating unsolved crimes known as cold cases of which Colorado has 1,400...

House's Federal Defender Asks Court to Stop Retrial

Posted on May 01, 2009
Yesterday Paul House's federal public defender, Stephen Kissinger, argued before a three judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati that the state of Tennessee has persisted in a pattern on delay in dealing with the Paul House case and should be barred from trying him again for the murder of Carolyn Muncey...

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U.S. Supreme Court Rules Gary Cone Deserves New Hearing

Posted on April 29, 2009
Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that Tennessee death row inmate Gary Cone deserves a new hearing to determine whether evidence withheld by the prosecution in Shelby County would have changed the jury's mind about imposing the death sentence...

Justice Day on the Hill

Posted on April 24, 2009
"I'm just a bill.Yes, I'm only a bill.And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill."Those are lyrics from the legendary Schoolhouse Rock video "I'm Just a Bill." Click HERE to watch it. For TCASK's 2009 Justice Day on the Hill, the bill was House Bill 1496, enacting a one year moratorium on Tennessee's death penalty...

New Hampshire Passes Historic Legislation for Crime Victims Equality

Posted on April 06, 2009
On March 26th the New Hampshire House of Representatives became the first legislative body in the country to pass a crime victims equality act to prohibit discrimination against family members of murder victims who oppose the death penalty. HB 370, "An act relative to the treatment of victims of crime", was passed by a 213-114 margin...

Paul House's DNA Not on Jeans

Posted on April 02, 2009
"Testing has again failed to find DNA from a former Tennessee death row inmate on evidence that will be used to retry him for a woman's murder."Read the rest of this article by CLICKING HERE."But the tests also found DNA from one of the stains is a combination of Muncey's and an unknown male, according to a lab analysis by Laboratory Corp...

High Court Says Federal Public Defenders Can Work on State Clemency Proceedings

Posted on April 01, 2009
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Tennessee inmate E.J. Harbison who had asked the court to allow his federal public defender to serve as his clemency counsel. Harbison, who is indigent, cannot afford to hire an attorney to represent him at clemency proceedings and requested that his federal public defender, who has worked on his case for years, continue to represent him...

Death Penalty Repeal in the Land of Enchantment

Posted on March 30, 2009
Diann Rust-Tierney, Executive Director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, had a wonderful article in the Huffington Post recently titled "Death Penalty Repeal in the Land of Enchantment." Read it by CLICKING HERE.Highlights include:"The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty joins people around the country and the world in celebrating New Mexico's death penalty repeal...

What About the Evidence?

Posted on March 24, 2009
In today's Tennessee Voices section of the Tennessean, editorials concerning the recommendations of the Tennessee Committee to Study the Administration of the Death Penalty are featured. I have an opinion piece included, as does Verna Wyatt, Director of You Have the Power, a victims' advocacy group in Tennessee...

New Mexico Repeals Death Penalty

Posted on March 19, 2009
Governor Bill Richardson signed House Bill 285, repealing the death penalty in the state of New Mexico. The following is a statement from Governor Richardson:Today marks the end of a long, personal journey for me and the issue of the death penalty.Throughout my adult life, I have been a firm believer in the death penalty as a just punishment ? in very rare instances, and only for the most heinous crimes...

New Mexico on the Brink of Repeal

Posted on March 17, 2009
On Friday, March 13, the New Mexico State Senate voted 24-18 in favor of repeal of the death penalty. This vote marked the last hurdle for abolition in the New Mexico legislature. Governor Bill Richardson has until tomorrow to decide if he will sign the repeal legislation into law, abolishing the death penalty in New Mexico...

TCASK Represented in NY

Posted on March 13, 2009
Former TCASK board of directors chair, Amy Sayward, hosted a discussion last night at St. Bonaventure University about the Catholic church and the death penalty. St. Bonaventure is located 77 miles south of Buafflo.The discussion which she co-hosted with Olean attorney, Janine Fodor was titled, "Are Catholics Really Pro-Life? The Case against the Death Penalty...

Cover Article on Steve Henley in the Nashville Scene

Posted on March 11, 2009
In last week's Nashville Scene, the cover story focused on the case of Steve Henley, a Tennessee death row inmate executed in February 2009. As most of you who regularly read this blog already know, I visited Steve for the past 10 years, and over those years, he became like a brother to me...

Eyewitness Testimony Lacks Reliability

Posted on March 09, 2009
60 Minutes aired a great story on last night's show concerning the increasing problems related to the reliability of eyewitness testimony. Leslie Stahl interviewed Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton, both of North Carolina, whose lives are forever connected by Thompson's misidentification of Cotton as her rapist...

Nashville Write-a-Thon

Posted on March 03, 2009

Cost of the Death Penalty

Posted on February 26, 2009
"When Gov. Martin O?Malley appeared before the Maryland Senate last week, he made an unconventional argument that is becoming increasingly popular in cash-strapped states: abolish the death penalty to cut costs."Yesterday's New York Times contained an article titled "Citing Cost, States Consider End to Death Penalty...

Abolitionist Legacy

Posted on February 25, 2009
Dianne Rust-Tierney, Executive Director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty had an excellent article published in The Huffington Post titled "We, Too, Are Abolitionists: Black History Month, Slavery, and the Death Penalty."Read it by CLICKING HERE...

Tennessee Study Committee Issues a Report

Posted on February 24, 2009
On February 19, the Tennessee Committee to Study the Administration of the Death Penalty met for the final time. Along with the legislative recommendations on which it had already decided, the Committee voted 12-2 to issue a report highlighting the issues it covered and summaries of the testimony received...

No Evidence Linking House to Murder

Posted on February 23, 2009
"DNA from key evidence in a Tennessee woman's slaying does not match the man who spent more than two decades on death row for killing her, according to new FBI lab tests."Read more from this AP article by CLICKING HERE.Once again, new evidence has been presented further indicating that Paul House did not murder Carolyn Muncey...

Steve Henley Media Coverage

Posted on February 13, 2009
"The EU says it has "strongly" condemned the execution of an American in a Tennessee prison earlier this month"Read the rest of this AP article by CLICKING HERE."Society has a love affair with violence."Read this Clarksville Leave Chronicle letter to the editor by CLICKING HERE...

Another Extension to the Paul House Case

Posted on February 12, 2009
Paul House?s retrial has been extended once again. Now, the House case is set for June 1, 2009, almost two years after he was released from prison on bail. Thanks to an anonymous donor, House was released but has been on house arrest since that time.Paul House was convicted of the 1985 murder of Carolyn Muncey...

Saying Goodbye

Posted on February 09, 2009
I have not had the time nor the energy to attempt to write anything here before today. The past week has been one of the most painful and most holy of my life, and it will take me a very long time to deal with all that has happened. Looking back, I guess that I lived in denial for a very long time about Steve's possible execution...

Clemency for Steve Henley

Posted on February 03, 2009
The state of Tennessee plans to execute Steve Henley at 1:00 a.m. on Wednesday, February 4th. The citizen response to this planned execution has been incredible.-6 total phone banks in Memphis, Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Nashville-Over 2000 phone calls made to ask citizens to call Governor Bredesen and ask him to grant Steve clemency-Hundreds of phone calls made to the Governor-Nearly 1000 clemency cards delivered to the Governor-2 opinion editorials-2 letters to the editorThe grassroots response has been strong because Tennesseans are troubled by the circumstances of this execution...

Memphis Commerical Appeal Editorial and Analysis

Posted on January 27, 2009
On Sunday, January 25, the Memphis Commercial Appeal published an editorial and lengthy analysis of the current state of Tennessee's death penalty.Read the editorial by CLICKING HERE. Read the analysis by CLICKING HERE.Editorial:"There is nothing government does that is more profound than to take the life of a citizen...

Arthur Copeland Receives New Sentence

Posted on January 16, 2009
Tennessee death row inmate, Arthur Copeland, has received a reduced sentence under a new plea. Copeland plead to second-degree murder with a sentence of 14 years. Copeland will serve 3 years before he is released because of the 11 years he spent on death row...

Letting Go of the Death Penalty

Posted on January 14, 2009
Richard C. Dieter, Executive Director of Death Penalty Information Center, had an excellent article published by the Huffington Post that makes a compelling argument for "letting go of the death penalty."Read the article by clicking HERE.Dieter examines the death penalty for what it truly is: a costly, time consuming, resource expending, and flawed public policy...

What Does it Take?

Posted on January 12, 2009
Sita Diehl, Director of National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) TN and a member of the Tennessee Committee to Study the Administration of the Death Penalty, recently proposed that the Committee recommend legislation exempting people suffering with severe mental illness at the time of their crimes from the death sentence...

Paul House is Home for Christmas

Posted on January 05, 2009
After spending over two decades on death row Paul House was able to spend his 47th birthday and the 2008 Christmas holidays, at home, with his family. Because of the rarity of Paul's case Channel 4 did a brief news piece on the House family's holiday celebration: http://www...

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